The Dallas Fuel lost to another really good team, maybe the best. Beating the Philadelphia Fusion (11-1) was a tall order, but the Fuel have entered every match believing they could win.

They feel they are a good team with the potential of being a great group, and while the Fusion match wasn’t a bad loss, head coach Aaron “Aero” Atkins said, the Fuel thought they should have won.

Some important factors went into the loss, and there are details that signal that the Fuel (4-5) have only gotten better recently.

Here are three talking points from Dallas’ weekend in Overwatch League play:

The right way

Nobody needs to be told that preparation is important at the professional level of anything. Consistency in schedule and dedicated practice from an Overwatch team can decide the progress it makes, especially one like Dallas that looks to make massive improvements from past seasons.

“I think the next step for us is to get an extra layer of consistency on top of what we have right now,” tank player Lucas “NotE” Meissner said. “There are a lot of metas that we are super strong in and we are getting better in almost all of them. We just need to get the same consistency that the top teams have and keep playing at the highest level that we can every time we get into a match.”

Aero upended just about everything about the Dallas Fuel’s routine in the offseason during late 2019. He brought in new players, but some of the biggest changes included the day-to-day.

Dallas has used every bit of time given for scrimmages, video review and discussion to work out any concerns.

A wrench was tossed into the gears before the Fusion match, though. Their scrimmage (which was unnamed) partner was a no-show and the Fuel’s weekly prep was mostly for not because the Fusion went at them with an unexpected style.

The fact that the Fuel took a map against the best team in North America, and probably should’ve taken at least another map based on minor errors, begs the question: What would have they looked like if they prepared for the dive composition the Fusion ran?

“We actually had a lot of cool strats prepped for that style so props to Fusion for playing something that we didn’t expect them to play,” Aero said. “Maybe if we put a little more time into focusing on a mirror composition.

How to Sombra

Kim “DoHa” Dongha is the Fuel’s Sombra specialist. He had an unexpected duel with the Fusion’s damage star Jeong “Heesu” Heesu on the hero.

The Sombra-Tracer combination worked swimmingly for the Fuel in the past when DoHa partnered with fellow damage star Jang “Decay” Gui-un in the dive composition. But DoHa made Sombra work on slower compositions, too.

Because the Fusion played dive and not their typical brawl style, DoHa and the Fuel had to pivot their strategy. The Sombra play was both dynamic and messy. There were fight-altering ultimates and others that left a lot to be desired.

To a viewer, it could be as simple as the players pressing the “Q” button when there are a lot of enemies nearby, but there’s a lot of chess at play beforehand, NotE said.

“You want to force out their reaction and then it’s about predicting how the opponents will react to what you do and plan for that,” NotE said. “If you want to go for a big EMP, at this level of Overwatch everyone will know you have it, so they will set up a plan to react to it and you have to account for that.”

This is another case of practice. The Fusion almost certainly knew the Fuel would run this kind of composition because the Dallas players thrive in the dive compositions. But if the Fuel prepared for the Sombra coming out of Heesu, this matchup could’ve had a different look.

Ensuing Madness

The May Madness tournament arrives on May 22 for North American teams. The results for the Fuel through these first three weeks of May will continue to be important for seeding, Aero said. The Fuel are 1-1 in that time, with a match against the Paris Eternal (6-5) on the horizon.

A win would prime Dallas for a solid seed in a tournament it would like to make noise in, but the Eternal have been a quality team.

Paris picked up a 3-1 win over the Los Angeles Gladiators (4-4) on Saturday and even defeated Philadelphia on March 8. They won’t be an easy task for the Fuel, but it presents another chance for Dallas to provide proof of its resurgence.

“There are a lot more games that could be meaningful wins that we have to focus on than the Philly match,” Aero said. “Paris is one of those where, if we can win next week it means a lot more for our schedule than closing out this Philly match.”

Aero and the Fuel have the classic one-day-at-a-time mentality right now. Next Sunday will show how they handled another week of preparing for a quality team.

Sean Collins, Staff Writer. Sean started at The Dallas Morning News in 2020 and covers North Texas esports, focusing on the Dallas Fuel and Dallas Empire. He covered high school and Kansas State athletics at The Manhattan Mercury. Sean graduated from the University of Kansas in 2018, where he worked for the University Daily Kansan as a sports editor covering Kansas hoops.